4 pathways to trusting god
I will never forget the day my swimming instructor announced we were moving to the deep end of the pool. As a five-year-old staring up at a massive diving board and 15 feet of water, I was gripped by total paralysis. I spent the entire evening trying to negotiate my way out of the next day's lesson, terrified of taking that plunge. It was over dinner that my father offered a piece of wisdom that has echoed through every season of my life since: "Bobby, in life you have to learn to trust. Just keep on trusting your teacher." The next day, shaking on that diving board, I looked down at my instructor treading water. I trusted him just enough to jump. Once I broke the surface, the fear vanished, and I eventually grew to master that pool.
In leadership, we frequently talk about trust being our primary currency. We spend countless hours trying to figure out how to get our teams, our congregations, and our organizations to trust us. But I have learned that horizontal trust is impossible to sustain if we do not first establish a foundation of vertical trust. We are simply God's instruments on this earth. We cannot expect people to boldly follow us into the deep end if we are secretly terrified of trusting God ourselves. Proverbs 3:5-6 commands us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and stop leaning on our own understanding, with the beautiful promise that He will direct our paths.
To keep that vertical alignment intact, I lean on four distinct pathways. First, we have to trust God with absolutely everything—not just our Sundays, but our entire lives, much like Abraham trusting God with Isaac on Mount Moriah. Second, we must surrender to God's timing. If I am honest, my biggest mistakes in 52 years of ministry haven't come from misunderstanding what God wanted me to do, but from running impatiently ahead of His schedule. Third, we have to trust Him in the face of adversity. When David's camp was burned at Ziklag and his own loyal men wanted to stone him, he didn't grow bitter; he encouraged himself in the Lord. Finally, we trust God simply because of who He is. His unshakeable character—His goodness, sovereignty, and justice—is the bedrock we can always rely on.
We serve a God who is already in the deep end, waiting to catch us when we finally decide to take the leap. When life makes no sense, when the timing feels delayed, or when the team turns against you, the mandate remains the same: keep on trusting. What is one area of your leadership right now where you are leaning on your own understanding instead of fully jumping into God's plan?
(A heartfelt thank you to our partners who make this ministry possible: Redwoods Stewardship (redwoodsstewardship.com) for helping ministries find financial clarity; Chosen Helpers Handyman Services (chosenhelpershandyservices.jobbersites.com) for expert, reliable home maintenance in Hampton Roads; and the Life Enrichment Center (https://lecliteracy.org) for empowering our next generation through literacy tutoring.)